'80s and '90s Thrillers
List activity
35K views
• 46 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
174 titles
- DirectorJohn LandisStarsDavid NaughtonJenny AgutterJoe BelcherTwo American college students on a walking tour of Britain are attacked by a werewolf that none of the locals will admit exists.Landis attempts to take advantage of the subtle line between horror and humor and play with our defense mechanism of laughing at uncomfortable things. The result is unapologetically uneven, though equally effective at scaring you as it is at making you laugh.
- DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsJohn TravoltaNancy AllenJohn LithgowA movie sound recordist accidentally records the evidence that proves that a car accident was actually murder and consequently finds himself in danger.Blow Out opened to minuscule audience interest but positive reviews from critics, including several ecstatic ones.
- DirectorLawrence KasdanStarsWilliam HurtKathleen TurnerRichard CrennaDuring an extreme heatwave, a beautiful Florida woman and a seedy lawyer engage in an affair while plotting the murder of her rich husband.The film launched Turner's career. The film was the directorial debut of Kasdan, screenwriter of Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Body Heat was a commercial success. Produced on a budget of $9 million, it grossed $24 million domestic.
- DirectorIvan PasserStarsJeff BridgesJohn HeardLisa EichhornRichard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.Emerging in the twilight of the New Hollywood years, Cutter's Way sees a practically bygone knack in American film for setting mood, evoking place and exploring unpredictable states of mind through a knowing, cynical, claustrophobic script, awash in the disgruntlement and mental cave-in of post-Vietnam America.
- DirectorRichard MarquandStarsDonald SutherlandKate NelliganStephen MacKennaA ruthless German spy, trying to get out of Britain with vital information about D-Day, must spend time with a young woman and her crippled husband.It's compelling to build a plot like this at a studious tread, rather than rushing head on through it. It gives us time to weigh the character of the Needle, and to contemplate his exceptionally scant, mysterious allusions to what he feels versus what he thinks.
- DirectorPeter YatesStarsWilliam HurtSigourney WeaverChristopher PlummerA janitor who claims he's seen a murder becomes romantically involved with the glamorous TV reporter covering the story.Several actual station employees at the film's location, WNEW-TV in New York, now known as WNYW Fox 5, cameo'd in the film. Producer-director Peter Yates and screenwriter Steve Tesich had collaborated two years earlier on the film Breaking Away.
- DirectorJoe DanteStarsDee WallacePatrick MacneeDennis DuganAfter a bizarre and near deadly encounter with a serial killer, a television newswoman is sent to a remote mountain resort whose residents may not be what they seem.The Howling is like the Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill of horror movies, playing its own creative variations on a classic old-hat plot device, engulfing us with reminiscences of other movies and media like it and at the same time giving it a real-world edge.
- DirectorBruce MalmuthGary NelsonSylvester StalloneStarsSylvester StalloneRutger HauerBilly Dee WilliamsWhen one of Europe's most lethal terrorists shows up in New York, an elite undercover cop is assigned to take him down by any means necessary.Nighthawks is known for its production problems, re-editing of the film by Universal and Stallone for different reasons, and the rough working relationship between Stallone and Hauer. The movie was a commercial disappointment, but it received positive reviews, except for some which criticized the grandstanding, harebrained heroics that would be come prototypical of this era.
- DirectorPeter HyamsStarsSean ConneryFrances SternhagenPeter BoyleA federal marshal stationed at a mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy. He gets no help from the workers or authorities when he finds himself marked for murder.Peter Hyams adapts High Noon to a futuristic outer space environment. Outland endured many comparisons to Alien, released two years earlier, most notably in its dark, claustrophobic and isolated neo-industrial deep space, and sinister and ruthless mega-corps. The movie was nominated for a Best Sound Oscar.
- DirectorDavid CronenbergStarsJennifer O'NeillStephen LackPatrick McGoohanA scientist trains a man with an advanced telepathic ability called "scanning" to stop a dangerous Scanner with extraordinary psychic powers from waging war against non scanners.Scanners succeeds The Brood, another early Canadian production by Cronenberg, scored by his regular Howard Shore, whose haunting orchestral strains would find mainstream audiences in The Silence of the Lambs a decade later.
- DirectorMichael WadleighStarsAlbert FinneyDiane VenoraEdward James OlmosA New York cop investigates a series of brutal deaths that resemble animal attacks.One of at least three wolf pictures to come out in 1981. Michael Wadleigh directed two films, this and Woodstock 11 years earlier, and never worked again.
- DirectorGeorge A. RomeroStarsHal HolbrookLeslie NielsenAdrienne Barbeau"Creepshow" is a 1982 movie that tells five grisly tales from a children's comic book: a murdered father rising from his grave, a bizarre meteor, a vengeful husband, a mysterious crate's occupant, and a plague of cockroaches.An homage to the EC and DC horror comic books of the 1950s. It was a sleeper hit, and remains popular to this day among horror fans.
- DirectorTobe HooperStarsJoBeth WilliamsHeather O'RourkeCraig T. NelsonA family's home is haunted by a host of demonic ghosts.Spielberg wrote and produced, but had a clause in his contract to prevent him directing another movie while he made E.T. Tobe Hooper was hired based on his work on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's the first and most successful entry in the Poltergeist series.
- DirectorJohn CarpenterStarsKurt RussellWilford BrimleyKeith DavidA research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness. The lower-than-expected performance has been attributed to E.T. and Blade Runner releasing around the same time. It has since gone on to gain a cult following and is even considered by some to be one of the greatest horror films ever made. It spawned a novelization, a comic book miniseries, a video game sequel and a prequel film with the same title.
- DirectorSamuel FullerStarsKristy McNicholChrista LangVernon WeddleA trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that's been raised to attack black people.White Dog is less a Stephen King-style chiller than a message movie, exploring the question of whether racism is a solvable problem or an innate condition.
- DirectorJohn CarpenterStarsKeith GordonJohn StockwellAlexandra PaulA nerdish boy buys a strange car with an evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.Set in '78, the plot follows a sentient automobile named Christine, who wreaks havoc on its teenaged owner. Stephen King's novel originally depicted the car being possessed by the evil spirit of its previous owner, whereas Carpenter's film shows the evil spirit as present from the beginning.
- DirectorLewis TeagueStarsDee WallaceDaniel Hugh KellyDanny PintauroCujo, a friendly St. Bernard, contracts rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town.Another Stephen King adaptation, only in this one, there is no good or evil. Just the indifferent forces of nature. Terribly sad, it revolves around a mother and son who, through a series of indirect circumstances, find themselves trapped inside a broken-down Pinto by a rabid St. Bernard. As excruciating as it is to watch the suffering and deterioration of the title pooch, there's no denying that the culmination to and moments of his attack are extremely intense, primarily thanks to well above-average work by cast, camera and cutting.
- DirectorRobert HiltzikStarsFelissa RoseJonathan TierstenKaren FieldsBunks and showers are a mad stabber's beat at a summer camp strictly for teens.Slasher films were in their heyday, and this god-awful one is largely known for its twist ending, which is considered by some to be one of the most shocking endings among horror films. What it really is is one of the dumbest.
- DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsCraig WassonMelanie GriffithGregg HenryA young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences.De Palma's thoroughly unsubtle homage to Rear Window and Vertigo, Body DOuble was largely dismissed by some and even denounced outright by others. De Palma earned a Razzie nomination. Only Melanie Griffith received rave reviews, earning a National Society of Film Critics Award, a Golden Globe nomination and the Booker's Club called her "Star of Tomorrow."
- DirectorNeil JordanStarsSarah PattersonAngela LansburyDavid WarnerA teenage girl in a country manor falls asleep while reading a magazine, and has a disturbing dream involving wolves prowling the woods below her bedroom window.A bizarre and sporadically eerie, but ever muddled, camp spin on Red Riding Hood by unconventional Irish writer-filmmaker Neil Jordan, featuring probably the cheapest, and most adorable, werewolves one could imagine.
- DirectorMark L. LesterStarsDrew BarrymoreDavid KeithFreddie JonesA couple who participated in a potent medical experiment gain telepathic ability and then have a child who is pyrokinetic.This Stephen King outing concerns a young girl, played by 11-year-old Drew Barrymore, who develops pyrokinesis and the secret government agency trying to control her.
- DirectorWes CravenStarsHeather LangenkampJohnny DeppRobert EnglundTeenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.Craven produced it on a budget it earned back during its first week, let alone being met with rave critical reviews and spawning a franchise consisting of a line of sequels, a TV series, a Friday the 13th crossover and a remake. It's credited with carrying on many tropes found in low-budget horror films of the time, including the morality play that revolves around teenage promiscuity resulting in their death, leading to the term "slasher film." Oh, and it was Johnny Depp's silver screen debut.
- DirectorJames CameronStarsArnold SchwarzeneggerLinda HamiltonMichael BiehnA human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.Given that the world can take this movie completely for granted now, one can forget how gradually Cameron unravels what's happening with the two nude men who emerge one night from a torrent of voltage. The sharp-witted strokes characterizing Sarah, making her so authentic that we viscerally crave her survival until he can bother to show us just why we should be particularly concerned.
- DirectorRichard TuggleClint EastwoodStarsClint EastwoodGeneviève BujoldDan HedayaNew Orleans single dad and cop Wes Block goes after a serial rapist-killer, but when he gets too close the hunter suddenly becomes the hunted.Pleases the Dirty Harry sensibility, but it's ambitious in a different way than those movies. It's still scarce even now for a foremost male star, especially a manly action hero, to star in a straight cop thriller in which the story pivots on his capability to understand and defer to a woman. Eastwood may have broken the bank making Dirty Harry movies, but he also kept changing and exploring, and that makes him one of the most remarkable of the box-office megastars.
- DirectorTom HollandStarsChris SarandonWilliam RagsdaleAmanda Bearse"Fright Night" sees a teenager believing that the newcomer in his neighborhood is a vampire. He turns to an actor in a television hosted horror movie show for help to deal with the undead.The original VHS release featured a pan-and-scan version of the film and was packaged in a paper cover which featured the poster artwork and sealed with a flap, subsequently followed by a bargain copy which sported a photo of Evil Ed on the front cover.